February 19, 2006
Kinda "Blah" Today
I got a nice Trager massage treatment and a nutritional IV this afternoon, which should provide a nice boost to my recovery efforts. Other than that I've just not felt great mentally. It's hard to explain exactly what it is like to go through the day-to-day when dealing with a potentially life-threatening illness combined with chronic fatigue. A lot of issues that bother me when I'm "off my guard" normally sort of have the run of things right now. I'm too tired to effectively fight back, but also too tired to adequately divert myself. I have been lucky to have visitors a fair number of days so far, but when I am just sitting here watching TV or staring at my computer screen realizing I should probably go back to watching TV, I cannot say that I know how I should be handling it all. I'm handling the immediate problems like a champion if I may toot my own horn for a moment, but it's the other stuff, the old lingering stuff, that I can't seem to stop as I normally would.
What I need is a string of good things to happen to me. That's really the trouble here. If I had something of substance to look back on favorably across any kind of recent time frame I'd be a-ok, but I just don't. Sure, I've had fun with friends, and that matters. I've had good support through this cancer issue to be sure. Unfortunately, having fun with friends doesn't really advance me anywhere past coming back home and hoping I'll have more fun with friends before they all move so far away I won't see them anymore. That's kinda how it all is right now. I'm not really depressed in the clinical sense, but I'm having to really scrap to get out of bouts of sadness, frustration and fear. Before my sonogram I was using everything I had to manufacture some luck for myself. This of course derailed it with a vengeance, and though it may be the worst time, it's not by any means the first. It's gone like this for 10 years or so now without anything remotely like a break.
Send me a break!
Posted by Andy at February 19, 2006 11:17 PM to the General category & Health categoryAndy, I know it's more and more difficult to see the positive in all this. Heck, to be honest, life has thrown you lemon after lemon... and rotten lemons at that. After a while of pondering, something you said to me stuck out. I'll paraphrase: With all that's happened to me, I've learned to express my emotions more openly.
I think you realize how huge that is. We can measure the success of our lives in many ways. I can say that I have a house, a car, a good job. What I'm really proud of though, is that I have a wonderful fiance' that I love and some of the best friends that I could ever hope for. We've shared some memories that will last an entire lifetime.
Thinking morbidly, we all die someday, and the question in most people's mind is... Did I make a difference? The answer is yes. When we're all dead and gone, the house, the car, the job won't matter. What lingers is the friendships we forge and the lives that we touch.
Andy, you are certainly the best kind of friend that anyone could ever have. The kind that genuinely cares.
As far as your friends moving far away, rest assured that I'm sticking around. You'll most assuredly be Uncle Andy when I have children, and I'll never be more than a phone call away.
And just because some of us move away, it doesn't mean we stop caring or stop supporting you.
Posted by: Mei at February 21, 2006 08:12 AMYou know, comments like this are kinda obvious I guess, but sometimes you just need to hear (or read) them anyway. I can only hope I am as supportive to others as the two of you have been to me through this ordeal. I've been reading through some posts over on a CFS support board I've contributed to for the past half a year, and I find a lot of examples where people are just lost on their own, with friends just not believing they're sick or family being spiteful. Then I come back over here and see exactly the opposite, and that is something I can hold onto regardless of how worn down I become.
I was planning to post a followup to this post and got hit with the tired thing from yesterday... About two hours after I wrote this, I went upstairs and said my prayers by the window as is typical for me in foul weather. At the last I thanked God for my life and everything in it, and I really meant it, just like I always do. I have to think the mutual love between all of us plays a pretty major role in that, and says a lot about our character too.
Thanks.
Posted by: Andy at February 21, 2006 12:42 PM